


to be fearful of the night

by erlkoenig



Category: Green Lantern (Comics), Green Lantern - All Media Types
Genre: Body Horror, M/M, and entirely halbeary's fault, space metaphors abound like stars devoured by the inky vastness of---wait, this fic is old and not terribly canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 22:06:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12219888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erlkoenig/pseuds/erlkoenig
Summary: I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night"Hal, if you're you again, for god's sake take my hand..."a series of ficlets sewn together, in which parallax continues to hum sweet nothings from the void





	to be fearful of the night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Halbeary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halbeary/gifts).



  
  
the radio goes staticky in the middle of rush hour.  
  
that’s how it starts.  
  
the radio goes staticky and hal reaches for the button absentmindedly, his concentration on the shit traffic and the fucking heat, his fingertips press against one of the preset buttons when he remembers, glances down at the aux cord hanging out of the front of the radio and still plugged into his ipod.  
  
the crackle gets louder, buzzes through the speakers until he can feel it just behind his eyes and pressing out of him. he’s only heard such an awful sound once before, when a supernova–still lightyears away–interfered with his communicator and the buzzing line was the last thing he heard for hours, drifting in the void lit up by the spectrum of the dying star. from millions of miles away, it still seemed so close, too close  
  
_hal…_  
  
his heart crawls into his throat, claws its fucking way up there like it’s made of broken glass and leaves him tasting blood while it hammers away where he can’t breathe  
  
_hal….._  
  
god help him, it sounds like it’s coming from the speakers and he knows that voice but he can’t quite–  
  
_…jordan…_  
  
he grabs the aux cord, yanks it out as he drags in a shuddering breath, chest heaving and sweat dripping down the back of his neck  
  
there’s silence, overwhelming and he’s back in space, floating, floating, floating and that supernova is so bright because he’s floating towards–  
  
_the sun_  
  
the radio comes back to life and he jumps, cracks the plastic knob and drives it slightly into the dashboard with how hard he hits it. the radio goes dead.  
  
he cracks the window and lights a cigarette, stares at his hands until he can will them to stop shaking  
  
—  
  
he doesn’t tell barry about the voice, even when barry touches the radio knob gently the next time he’s in the car, looks up at hal with such soft, questioning concern  
  
“bad day” hal offers, doesn’t look at him when he lights up a smoke  
  
_(he can’t be in this car anymore without chainsmoking, he needs something for his nerves, something for his hands or he’s going to grip the wheel hard enough to leave indentions from his nails)_  
  
barry is still looking at him, worried now, and he sighs, “song came on, reminded me of some shit that happened” he gestures with his cigarette hand, leaves a trail of smoke, “out there, i may have hit it too hard, should still work”  
  
he hesitates just at the knob, fingers barely making contact and barry’s voice sounds so far away  
  
“hal, it’s okay we can just talk” but he knows barry needs the distraction, the noise, something to jiggle his leg in time to and hal can’t deny him that because he’s not afraid  
  
the plastic cracks a little more and he hates the sound, but just as he thought the radio works and he ignores the weird flip his stomach does when barry grabs the aux cord and plugs it into his phone he doesn’t care what they listen to, doesn’t complain about barry’s taste in music, so long as he doesn’t hear static he could listen to jazz for all he cares  
  
“i’ve been thinking about dyeing this shit out of my hair” and it’s a lie, he hasn’t been thinking about it at all, this is the first time he’s thought about it  
  
barry reaches up, twirls a lock of white around his fingers, “only if you want to, i don’t know i kinda like it”  
  
hal looks over at him incredulously, “i was a fucking monster” and tries not to see the wounded look barry gives him  
  
“hey–”  
  
“i was a fucking  _monster_ “ he growls out again and barry flinches but doesn’t pull away  
  
curls his fingers around the back of hal’s neck like he’s trying to keep them both grounded and says  
  
“that wasn’t you”  
  
he almost believes him  
  
—-  
  
its like something out of a horror movie it goes like this  
  
he throws back the rest of his beer, drops it in the recycling bin and tugs his pajama pants higher up on his hips  
  
the clink of his dog tags against his bare chest and the soft padding of his feet on the wooden floors are the only sounds in his tiny apartment, they echo off the walls as he makes his way to the bathroom its all routine that its almost boring moonlight through his bedroom window and the harsh white flicker of the bathroom light, the way it hums  
  
_staticky_  
  
he freezes, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth and his hand is already reaching for the lightswitch when he grunts, angry and almost embarrassed, drops his hand and opens the medicine cabinet for the advil there because there’s a headache forming just behind his eyes and god damn it he wants a decent night’s sleep for once spits, rinses his mouth and swallows three pills down  
  
he doesn’t see it right away, catches the movement out of the corner of his eye as the mirrored door closes, fingers curled around the sharp edge of the cabinet the buzzing is louder now and that ache he turns his head, looks at his reflection in the mirror wide-eyed, leans in just to be sure  
  
_brown they’re brown they’re still brown_  
  
sighs, feels his shoulders slump and he would laugh but his reflection grins at him as if to say see? everything is just alright there’s a scream in his throat, pressed behind his teeth that are not the too-sharp teeth he sees reflected back at him  
  
_hal…._  
  
he stumbles back, feels the cold press of the bathroom tile against his skin, he’s sweating and freezing all at once, presses the heels of his palms against his eyes as the scream tries to fight its way out of him, half-strangled and almost keening  
  
when he looks up again, when he brings his hands away from his eyes and blinks away the pinpricks of technicolor pressure, its just him, wild-eyed and gasping for breath, looking back at him  
  
—-  
  
he’s floating in darkness, curled in on himself, knees drawn to his chest and eyes closed tight so he doesn’t have to see all   
  
the emptiness  
  
behind his eyelids there’s a light, a supernova in slow motion and everything is so bright for a moment, so  
  
_yellow_  
  
when he opens his eyes he’s back in the darkness and it’s cold, snakes its way up his spine and wraps around his ribs until he can hardly breathe and he’s suspended, no longer floating, held in place and its so cold  
  
_everything was fire and he watched from the inside as he burned alive_  
  
_stardust we are all made of stardust_  
  
he pulls and stretches, tries to reach for anything, anything at all but his limbs feel so heavy and he’s so tired  
  
he wants to sink  
  
sink into the nothingness  
  
when he closes his eyes all he can see is yellow and its too bright but he’s so tired, so very tired  
  
he drifts, there are fingers that tilt his chin up until he can see the stars above him, suspended just like him in the aspic of the universe, moving in slow motion and his eyes are half-lidded, looking through lashes and leaning into the the soft caress of those fingers against his face  
  
_hal…_  
  
he’s sinking upwards or is he drowning in shallow stardust, there are hands on him now, touching his neck and down to his chest and they’re burning him up, burning him  
  
_alive_  
  
he opens his eyes, tries to scream but his voice sinks back into his chest and nests there like a bird, a sleeping little bird god he’s so tired  
  
_sleep.._  
  
he closes his eyes and there’s so much yellow, so much brightness and it fills his lungs, seeps into the spaces between his ribs, between his spine and it lulls, its drowns and he opens his eyes against it, opens into the darkness and sleeps  
  
—-  
  
there are teeth against his neck, pressing lightly at first and then harder, harder until the skin bruises in a violent burst of purple and red, short lived and fading to yellow, to pale  
  
“hal?” he squints up into the darkness, hands reaching blindly for something, anything to touch, fingers brush against the sharp angle of cheekbone, trace along a jawline he knows by touch, by heart blinks away the grogginess and tries to sit up but hands are pushing him down, back into the pillows and there’s a body settling over him, thighs straddling his hips and he wants to say  _i missed you too_  but there’s something wrong  
  
he can feel it, something staticky in the air, buzzing around him and over his skin like blunted lightning  
  
“hal” he asks again, eyes adjusting to the dark and it–  
  
it looks like hal, but he can’t relax, can’t shake that feeling that there’s something not quite right about the way he’s looking down at him, and the way the moonlight, the starlight reflects in his eyes and they look almost golden  
  
_barry…_  
  
its like a low rumble of thunder, vibrates through his skin and he thinks this is what a star sounds like, it leaves him breathless and there are too many sharp teeth in that mouth that he thought he knew so well barry… the nova repeats, it’s body shifts and undulates until it settles between his legs and his breath hitches, heart banging wildly in his chest and he  
  
he wants to touch, reaches up and presses his fingers against tanned chest, presses hard because he’s not sure this is real, and those teeth are too close to his face, a brush of lips against his cheek, down to his neck and then biting again, breaks the skin and he arches up into it and that mouth is almost unbearably warm, the skin under his hands is burning to the touch  
  
“hal” he pants, feels a tongue lave at the wound on his neck until the bleeding stops and his hips rock up, looking for something, anything, some kind of friction, some kind of touch  
  
there’s a laugh in his ear, the fabric of space tears open around his head and births a black hole and it is laughing over him, ready to devour, to swallow him whole and he knows  
  
“parallax”  
  
—–  
  
he arches up into every touch, sweat slick and breathing prayers for more anything   
  
_please please please_  
  
he thinks space tastes like blood, cold and metallic and dripping into his mouth every time they kiss, sharp and leaves his mouth aching for more of that taste until he swipes his tongue over his lips and knows he’s tasting himself  
  
digs his nails into hal’s–  
  
_no it’s not hal its wearing hal but its not_    
  
–back and tears burning lines into the skin, cuts red through the constellations of freckles that his fingertips remember like a pattern tattooed into the whorls of his fingerprints  
  
rocks his hips up and sobs, the sound half-broken and desperate because there’s a monster in his bed that looks like hal and  tastes like hal and fucks like the world is ending all around them  
  
_“pleasepleaseplease”_  
  
the void sounds like static and thunder, a heartbeat slowed down until it drags into infinite syllables, breathes cold and electric next to his ear, breathes his name and he’s falling through space, screaming a name he knows from nightmares that are only barely his own  
  
he’s falling and grasping at stars, a star collapsing in on itself in a burst of dark light and singing him sweetly to destruction

**Author's Note:**

> nelyafinwes.tumblr.com


End file.
